Alexander Luthor (Earth 1)
History Lex Luthor is the genius, ego-centered Metropolis businessman who, with his company LexCorp and scientifically advanced Warsuit, has acted as both an antagonist and ally to Superman and the Justice League. Early Life Alexander Luthor was born and raised in Smallville, Kansas with a sickly sister, Lena, who he promised to cure. Lex's father, Lionel was the main scientist of the Legionnaires Club, an organization created by Vandal Savage to find the hidden secrets of the universe through an approaching event known as the totality. In an attempt to create a human-martian hybrid species behind Savage's back, Lionel used a device to capture a martian child from across time and space, the young J'onn J'onzz. Lionel instructed Lex to bond with J'onn in order to gain his trust, however Lex, under the name "Albie" (like L-B, or L-2, Lionel being L-1) became close friends with J'onn as they communicated telepathically as well with a special communicator on Lex's shirts, creating messages out of infrared light. Eventually, with the threat of the Blackhawks shutting them down, the Legionnaires prepared to kill J'onn. Fearing for his friend's life, Lex altered the killing machine to send J'onn back to his home, revealing his true name with his final message. With the knowledge of Lionel's secret now known to Savage, he attacked and shut down the Legionnaires, altering the minds of all of those involved to forget the entire organization. With the memories of his life taken from him, Lionel became a broken shell of a man, drinking heavily and frequently beating his family. Adulthood and Criminal Operations As an adult, Lex Luthor moved to Metropolis and set himself up as a troubleshooter. When he began intercepting signals from an alien craft that called itself the "Brain Inter-Acting Construct", he set up a dialogue, trading data about Earth for alien scientific knowledge. Through a strange benefactor, he was recruited into an alliance of convenience with General Lane of Project: Steel Soldier and Glen Glenmorgan, the corporate master of Metropolis, against Superman. However, Luthor double-crossed Lane and Glenmorgan, stealing the Kryptonite the group planned to use, and leaked their plan to a reporter named Clark Kent. He attempted to aid Brainiac during the shrinking of Metropolis, but, in the aftermath, there was no evidence and so the government was forced to let him go. Luthor spent the next several years filling the power vacuum in Metropolis left by Glenmorgan. Around four years after the formation of the Justice League, he instigated the American invasion of Qurac so that he could sell his super-weapons to the army. That was also the year that he personally faced Superman for the first time and was detained by the hero, receiving a facial scar across the left side of his face in the fight. Luthor spent a year in prison, during which Superman would sometimes visit to ask his opinion of a particularly troubling scientific disaster. Forever Evil While in prison, Lex was visited by Pandora, a mysterious woman who believed he could open her box with the darkness of his heart, but a group of heroes led by Wonder Woman broke into his cell in an attempt to seize the box. Soon after, Luthor was released from prison and returned to his position as the CEO of LexCorp, just in time to witness the Crime Syndicate arrive and announce that criminals were free to walk the Earth. Determined to stop the Crime Syndicate from controlling his world, Lex chose to awaken his unfinished Superman clone, Subject B-0, and initiate the Syndicate's downfall. Both unlikely heroes explored the destroyed remains of Metropolis and recruited a handful of other villains that opposed the new world order, forming their own "Injustice League". When finally preparing to fight the Syndicate, a new enemy - Mazahs, Lex's Earth 3 analogue - attacked Luthor and his allies. However, Mazahs' power was no match for Lex's superior intellect, and Lex defeated and killed his counterpart in battle. In the aftermath, after the Crime Syndicate had been dethroned and the Justice League had been restored from the Firestorm Matrix where they had been trapped, Luthor and the rest of the Injustice League were regarded as heroes and celebrated for their courageous efforts. Justice League In the wake of the invasion, public opinion of Lex Luthor was incredibly favorable, and he decided that he liked it. In an effort to continue being regarded as a hero, he tried to convince the Justice League to recruit him, but was initially unsuccessful. The Justice League eventually talked about how Luthor was going to keep on his crusade with or without the help of the Justice League and, begrudgingly, allowed him to join. One of the first missions Luthor spent with the Justice League was tracking down the Crime Syndicate member Power Ring's power ring, which had flown onto the hand of Jessica Cruz following his death, and invited Cruz to join their ranks. After opening up LexCorp for an open house on his company, Luthor was attacked by an assassin named Neutron. Though Luthor and the Justice League repelled Neutron, the assassin accidentally released LexCorp's secret project - the Amazo Virus - that turned all of Metropolis into a quarantine zone. Luthor and the League worked together to contain the virus and heal all the infected. Darkseid War During the conflict between Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor, Lex traveled with the Justice League to the planet Apokolips. After Darkseid's death, a large amount of energy from the Anti-Life Equation was released, giving Lex and the rest of the League all-new special abilities. Luthor, absorbing a large amount of Darkseid's energy, was deemed the "God of Apokolips" and became the new Darkseid. Rebirth Lex returned to earth, becoming bored of Apokolips, and shortly thereafter learned of Superman's death. Inspired to become the hero of Metropolis that his sister could be proud of when she awakens, Luthor quickly bought out the Daily Planet to retrieve Superman's cape and declared himself the new Superman. The next day, he went public by stopping a robbery and hostage situation on live television. However, the Pre-Flashpoint Clark Kent, who had arrived in the current timeline after the events of Convergence, was watching and donned his Superman uniform, believing that Luthor was the same evil mastermind as his Luthor. Superman quickly showed, attempting to "stop" Luthor. However, before the fight could escalate any further, a captive Doomsday appeared, which was the target of the robbery, and both Supermen worked together to stop it. Later, Luthor was targeted by two aliens named Godslayer and Zade who had foreseen that Luthor would one day once again take Darkseid's place on Apokolips and commit worse deeds than the New God himself. Taken to their planet, Luthor was rescued by the new/old Superman, and the Supermen, again, had to work together to escape the assassins and return to Earth. Later, after having multiple trust issues with Superman, Lex Luthor ripped the Superman symbol from his armor, claiming that Superman abandoned him. While he did not return to evil ways, he now acted as an independent hero, with plans that he would not share with Superman Family. He was then recruited into Team Entropy by Brainiac to assist fighting Omega Titans. Continuing to face mistrust from other superheroes and being called a villain, Luthor discussed his feelings about the situation with Martian Manhunter. He ended up an instrumental part of the plan to stop the Omega Titans: when Deathstroke failed to imbue Justice League's weapon with the power of entropy, Lex took it from him, and to Slade's surprise, gave it the necessary essence of entropy, despite his supposed status as a hero. This has given Lex the epiphany, regarding Earth and humanity representing the universal force of entropy, which he shared with Martian Manhunter and made an ominous promise to meet again sooner than he and the Justice League might have wanted. Legion of Doom Formation After Luthor's revelation that the main force of Earth was entropy, and that his life as a hero was meaningless, Luthor set out to see just how true this was, building a time machine and travelling one million years into the future. What he found was a world in which everyone worshiped him, where after centuries of destruction between heroes and villains, humanity found the lost journals of Lex Luthor and began to follow his teachings. In this world, people did not try to make the world a better one, but instead accepted it as it is, writhe with faults and entropy. Shocked at this future, Luthor learned that the reason humanity went down this route was because he himself missed something, a secret, that would change everything. The people of the future could not tell Luthor what it exactly was, but they showed him a symbol that represented it. Waking up in the present, Luthor spent time recreating all of the technology he saw on his travels from memory, and looking into all possible events he could have overlooked to bring about that future. The only thing he could find, however, was an invitation to a reunion of the Legionnaires Club in Kansas. Using the opportunity to blow off some steam, Lex bought the building and loaded it with explosives, as a last way to get revenge at his abusive father. However, during the explosion, Lex found a door that only he could see, with a glowing doorknob, having the symbol that the future showed him engraved on it. Using the door, Lex found the remains of the true Legionnaires Club, and all of their readings on The Totality, and how it would change the world. Reading up on the seven forces of Perpetua, Lex realized that the only way to fully access this power, the power of accepting reality as it is, not as it should be, he would need a team to access the seven powers. Realizing what he needed to do to bring about 'doom,' Lex began to recruit the Legion of Doom. Recruitment Lex began to recruit members to his new Legion, starting with Gorilla Grodd and Sinestro, appealing to them with the promise of a way to finally beat The Flash and a way to obtain the Invisible Spectrum, respectively. Soon, he found his way to The Joker, who promised to join the Legion as long as Lex never associated himself with The Batman Who Laughs, Who Lex had captured. Unbeknownst to Lex, Joker planned on playing the ultimate joke on him, to make it so that they came incredibly close to winning, and then betraying him at the last minute. With his new Legion of Doom, including members Black Manta and Cheetah, they began to hatch their ultimate plan. Justice 2033 When Brother Eye gained sentience, Luthor helped the Justice League to combat Eye's forces. Despite everything, Lex and League failed. When the League fell, Lex began to reinforce LexCorp and Metropolis with his reverse engineered Apokoliptian technology. For the next few years, Lex worked against Brother Eye in secret, becoming one of the few who tried to fight Earth's new overlord. In 2027, two years after the fall of the Justice League, Lex discovered abnormalities in the secure basement of LexCorp. He traveled down to investigate to find his sister missing from her containment cube. Lex used the gauntlet from his Warsuit to eliminate the EYE-bots he found there. He continued to search until he found his sister, not in a giant mechanical body, but as some sort of cyborg with bits and pieces of herself nothing but mechanical parts. He asked her what happened and she said Brother Eye did what he couldn't: he saved her life. He asked her what she gave in return and she replied with "You". Lena continued to explain that she swore to Brother Eye that he would have the backing of LexCorp if he saved her. Lex angrily told her that that was not her deal to make and he will not follow through. She asked him what happens now and he said he will help her; give her a human-looking body and he will have her leave. He told her, despite everything, he loves her, as she is his sister. Over the next year, Lena made her own money with her own inventions independently. She began her own startup in National City, befriending the reporter, Kara Danvers. Through all of it, Lex kept an eye on her. Lex wanted to check up on her, as he had suspicions on how she was able to get access to some of the familiar tech. He boarded his private jet and, as it flew over Metropolis, the aircraft exploded, the debris ceasing down to the city. The retired Superman, working with the new Superman and Flamebird, stopped the debris from hurting anyone. Upon inspection of the crash, they confirmed that Lex was killed in the explosion. After his death, Lena took control of his company, renaming it LuthorCorp. Unbeknownst to everyone, Lena was complacent in Lex's murder at the hands of Brother Eye. In fact, the rest of the world believes it to be an accident. Powers and Abilities Abilities * Genius Level Intellect ** Business Management: As the CEO of LexCorp Lex has great Business Management skills. ** Political Science ** Science *** Chemistry *** Robotic Engineering * Hand-to-Hand Combat (Basic) * Multilingualism: Lex can speak Mandarin fluently. Paraphernalia Equipment * Kryptonite Weapons * Lex Luthor's Warsuit: Luthor's current warsuit is constructed out of Apokalyptian technology. ** Energy Projection ** Flight ** Superhuman Strength ** Superhuman Durability ** Force Field * Motherbox Trivia * Lex Luthor was born in 1973 and died in 2028. * Lex has yet to appear in 2033, but has been mentioned See Also * Leticia Luthor * Lillian Luthor * A.R.G.U.S. * Justice 2033 Vol 1 7 Category:Characters Category:Neutral Characters Category:Earth 1 Characters Category:Deceased Characters Category:LuthorCorp Members Category:Injustice League Members Category:Legion of Doom Members Category:Justice League Members Category:A.R.G.U.S. Members Category:Daily Planet Staff Members Category:Superfamily Villains Category:Justice League Villains